Wind power is becoming so cheap and so commonplace that it appears poised to help blow up the country’s nuclear power sector, according to a recent Bloomberg article (which you really should read in full). Other highlights from the piece:

Wind power has two advantages. Green energy laws in many states require utilities to buy wind energy under long-term contracts as part of their clean-energy goals and take that power even when they don’t need it. Wind farms also receive a federal tax credit of $22 for every megawatt-hour generated.

Thus, even when there is no demand for the power they produce, operators keep turbines spinning, sending their surplus to the grid because the tax credit assures them a profit. …

Meanwhile, nuclear and coal plants must continue running even as this “negative pricing” dynamic forces them to pay grid operators to take the power they produce.

“It is becoming more pronounced as more wind is coming on,” Christopher Crane, chief executive officer of Chicago-based Exelon Corp. (EXC), said in a phone interview.

If the push to “over-develop” subsidized wind continues, “there is a very high probability that existing safe, reliable nuclear plants will no longer be competitive and will have to be retired early,” according to Crane.

But Exelon, the biggest nuclear-power producer in the country, gets plenty of government help itself. A 2011 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that the nuclear power industry wouldn’t even be viable without government support: “more than 30 subsidies have supported every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining to long-term waste storage.”